Google’s new experimental AR app helps you socially distance properly

Staying apart by two meters is a social good. It’s also hard to gauge.

What you need to know

• Google has launched Sodar, an app that encourages effective social distancing.
• Making use of augmented reality, it is intended to help users visualize a two-meter or six feet radius around themselves.
• It’s available as a web-app on Chrome for Android.

Google has launched a new experimental web-app, Sodar. Built to work with Chrome on Android, it’s an AR app that’s intended to help you keep two meters (or six feet) apart.

For a quick recap, as part of state and public health measures to contain the spread of the novel-coronavirus, it has been recommended that individuals going out in public stay two meters apart from each other. This has been dubbed social distancing (the WHO prefers the term physical distancing). Sodar is intended to help you estimate just how far away two meters is by using AR on your environment.

Sodar – use WebXR to help visualise social distancing guidelines in your environment. Using Sodar on supported mobile devices, create an augmented reality two meter radius ring around you. #hacktohelp https://t.co/Bu78QrEN9f pic.twitter.com/kufatNFDQk

— Experiments with Google (@ExpWithGoogle) May 28, 2020

Of course, one could argue that it’s not really practical to pull at your phone and navigate to Sodar every time you’re in public any more than it would be to pull out a tape measure. That’s probably why it’s an experimental app rather than anything official. That being said, it’s better than nothing if you have to be sure.

You’ll need to have an Android phone and Google Chrome to access it as it doesn’t work with any other browsers or platforms at the moment.

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